Abstract
Landscape conservation efforts in many European countries focus on cultural landscapes, which are part of the cultural identity of people, have a great heritage significance, improve the living standards of local populations and provide valuable cultural biodiversity. However, despite a wide arrange of protective measures, the management of preserved areas is seldom effective for the protection of cultural landscapes. Through a multi-approach analysis, we characterise the main heritage attributes of 17 Protected Landscapes in Spain and assess their management effectiveness by quantifying the evolution of the spatial pattern inside and outside protected landscapes. Our method has proven useful to quantitatively describe the spatial-temporal patterns of change of the protected and unprotected landscapes studied. We highlight the following results: (i) the concepts of uniqueness and naturalness are not appropriate to preserve cultural landscapes; (ii) the land protection approach currently adopted is not useful for the protection of cultural landscapes, particularly of the most rural ones; (iii) the landscapes studied with greater rural features can be considered as “paper parks”. We recommend that different protection measures focused on the needs and desires of the rural population are taken into account in order to protect cultural landscapes that are shaped by traditional rural activities.
Highlights
As a consequence of relevant international initiatives concerning landscape protection, at the end of the 20th century [1,2,3] the effectiveness of already implemented legal mechanisms for land management has been questioned [4,5]
The analysis performed on the entire landscape data matrix, composed by the selected protected landscapes and their surrounding unprotected areas (PCA1; see Figure 2), allowed us to identify the trajectories of landscape change throughout the study period (Figure 3)
The surrounding territorial matrix has undergone a transformation process towards greater spatial heterogeneity linked to land use richness and fragmentation (LMs characterising the positive end of axis 1: Shannon’s diversity index (SHDI), DIVISION, SHEI, MSIEI, SIEI, Patch richness density (PRD), ED and Splitting index (SPLIT); see Appendix A and Table 4a), in which the dominant land uses are those related to the development of woodland systems, mainly composed of forests and dehesas
Summary
As a consequence of relevant international initiatives concerning landscape protection, at the end of the 20th century [1,2,3] the effectiveness of already implemented legal mechanisms for land management has been questioned [4,5]. Conservation efforts in many European countries have focused on landscapes depending on human intervention. These cultural landscapes, which are part of the cultural identity of people, have a great heritage significance, improve the living standards of local populations and provide valuable cultural biodiversity [10,11,12,13]. The exceptional natural and cultural values of these landscapes have encouraged measures for their protection These types of landscape are a relevant reference for the implementation of a sustainable lifestyle [15]. The disparity between landscapes that are part of Category V is remarkable and Protected Landscapes throughout Europe show many differences their natural, cultural, and social characteristics and in the legislation and the reasons considered for protection
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